I have lived in Shanghai for a long time. Well, I lived about 100 km away from Shanghai, in a nearby city called Suzhou, for a long time. To be more accurate, I lived in a special district called Suzhou Industrial Park: a dry misnomer for a new hyper urban project built in conjunction with the Singaporean government in the early 2000s. I guess in a Communist state, industrial was the word of choice to denominate progress.

When I moved there in 2006, the district was nothing like what the Tier 2 megacity it is today. It was sparsely developed with a couple of factories, a few new residential complexes, and a single strip of non-local dining spots where most non-local patrons recognized one another. It was still considered rural and underdeveloped, with many newly concrete-laden streets ending abruptly at random blocks. No metro system or high-speed rail to Shanghai. The nearest supermarket was a 20-minute electronic tuk-tuk ride away.

The influence of the shared governance with the Singaporean government was somewhat subtle and randomly sprawled throughout the district. For example, our first home after relocation was at an obscure complex named Orchard Manor, build by a Singaporean engineering company that also built orchardgateway and UE Square. My daily commute to school involved waiting for the school bus by the replica of the Merlion at the gate. My first school was also Suzhou Singapore International School, where multiple of my teachers were named Mr. Goh and Mrs. Goh, and my friends Cheryl and Gordon.

Just within the 5 years that I was there, the city transformed, equally as erratic as my puberty. The transformation was both physical and cultural. New mega complexes sprang up every month block after block, while more social media services were blocked site after site. When Facebook was blocked, H&M opened at a local mall. When Youtube was blocked, Times Square with Subway and Burger King opened in the heart of the district. More foreigners moved in, evident from my growing class size from 15 per year to 30. Pollution was more visible too. It was never unbearable until the 2010s when the first city metro also opened.

The realization of what living in Suzhou and this industrial “park” meant for me only hit me when I happened to move to Singapore more than a decade later, back to passing the Merlion on my daily commute to work. It’s fascinating to see how the Chinese interpretation of a well-designed, highly functional, and intentionally urban planned city-state turned out. Singapore and Suzhou resemble nothing of each other on the surface, especially given that Suzhou is 12 times larger in land area. Yet in brief moments of flashbacks to my childhood while walking in Singapore do I realize the subtle resemblances. And I wonder if it was a funny subconscious fate that brought me back to where I grew up in a parallel universe.